I had planned to work on my 7+ hour long flight from SFO to ATL (accidentally bought a 1-stop ticket), but since I just got The Big Short downloaded to my Kindle, I decided to read a few chapters first. Well, I didn’t get any work done, but I did finish the book!
This is Michael Lewis at his best. Liar’s Poker is one of my favorite books, so I had high expectations for this one too. Although having read other best-selling books on the topic of our financial meltdown, I still had my doubts as to whether he can really keep my interest up AND explain just what the heck happened in simple terms. Yet he made it happen. From the perspective of a few insiders, he managed to create a storyline that starts with a single man, years before any crisis was even imaginable. Through his simple and humorous narrative, these people who would prove to be legends in the financial crisis came to life. Interestingly, defining each character’s personality doesn’t take away from the validity of the book, it merely adds flavor to the facts, and actions make more sense. As we follow the lives of these people, the major events of the financial crisis take place, and we go through the same process of discovery as they did, and complicated concepts and strange acronyms did not seem as intimidating. At the end of the book, the reader sits on the same staircase as the men who went through the same rollercoaster ride known as the financial crisis, feeling a bit lost now that the climax was over. Definitely a worthy read for anyone interested in finance, or just wants to know what the heck happened.
My second recommendation is a documentary. Many have watched and written about it, since it was the Oscar winner last year. For those that have not, The Cove unveils the dolphin slaughtering industry in a small Japanese town called Taiji. I’ve had it in my Netflix queue for many months, but have not dared to press the play button. But I was looking for a good cry yesterday, and thought it would be the perfect choice. I was not disappointed.
The storyline focuses on one person – Ric O’Barry, the famous dolphin trainer who popularized the “swim with dolphins” industry through the Flipper series, then spent the rest of his life trying to bring it down. The documentary was somewhat like a superhero movie. You have the villains — the Japanese fishermen dedicated to keeping their operations secret, the superhero – Ric O’Barry who tries everything to stand in their way, and a special operation that includes cameras disguised as rocks, agents with special skills, and secret night ops that almost get them caught. There were also a lot of supplemental footage that show various aspects of the issue — from mercury poisoning, lack of action by IWC, to shady Japanese officials and Sea World performances. Then there were the dolphins — the ones exhibiting their intelligence through their playfulness in front of a mirror, the ones displaying their creativity through making beautiful water rings, the ones showing their adventure side roaming with the surfers on a big wave, and then the ones disappearing into a hidden cove, sinking into a red sea filled with their blood.
Humans, with their intelligence, their curiosity, their greed, and their cruelty, have made the world a pretty scary place for other lifeforms. We argue it’s ok because they don’t have the same level of thoughts and feelings as us. I laugh because we can barely communicate our thoughts and emotions to our own kind, but we claim to understand what goes through another species’ mind? Sometimes I’d rather believe that Buddhism is the ultimate truth — that there’s is something called karma, and reincarnation, and for all the evil things we do on this earth to everything around us we will be punished in the next life. Maybe the dolphin slaughterers would see through the eyes of a dolphin — although I would think that would be too good of a fate for him to be able to reincarnate into such a wonderful creature. At the end of the movie, when I saw Ric O’Barry standing at the busiest intersection in Shibuya with images of the blood filled Taiji cove, I can’t help but think back to the earlier footage of a young Ric O’Barry smiling brightly, swimming freely with his favorite Flipper Kathy. I wonder if that memory is what keeps him going all these years.
So in final thought, I’m taking swimming with dolphins off of my bucket list, since it’s really the demand for Flipper that has kept this industry going, and while I can do little to stop it, I can at least start with myself. It’s human nature to want to keep those we love close because it makes us happy, all the while not realizing perhaps it’s inflicting pain and suffering on them. Maybe that’s really the final lesson.
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